Is Remote Robotic Surgery Practical?
Last summer, I experienced a robot assisted radical prostatectomy. I wrote about the experience and follow-on treatment in Health Attitude. I was on the operating room table, and the surgeon was across the room, sitting at the console of the da Vinci robotic surgical system console. Another surgeon, an anesthesiologist, and nurses were at the operating […]
A Surgical Robot Stitching A Grape
One year ago this week, I had a robot-assisted radical prostatectomy, followed by 39 days of intensity-modulated radiation treatment. The combination of the two has almost certainly cured me of prostate cancer. I wrote a chapter in Health Attitude about my personal experience and about 3-D printing and robots in healthcare. They will play an increasingly larger […]
How to find out your surgeon’s track record
A new web site called SurgeonRatings.org aims to add transparency to how good our surgeons are compared to each other. The site also shows how many other doctors offer referrals to a surgeon. The data are imperfect, but making it available is a good step in the right direction of enabling consumers to make better informed decisions. […]
Topol Interviews Gawande and Gladwell: Awesome People
Dr. Eric J. Tool is Director, Scripps Translational Science Institute and Editor-in-Chief at Medscape. Medscape is part of the WebMD Health Professional Network. Eric has a regular video interview series called One on One. I find his interviews extremely interested, and I would like to share two I just watched. You must be a Medscape subscriber […]
How Many Surgeries Are Necessary?
As discussed in Health Attitude, the number one problem with our healthcare system is the high cost. There are many reasons for the high cost including fraud, inefficiency, big pharma runaway pricing, and unncessary tests and procedures. Some estimates put the cost of the latter factor at between $500 billion and $1 trillion. The cost is unsustainable […]
